Science

“What would you do if an asteroid were about to hit Earth?” You know, there’s a lot of “doom-porn” circulating about this near-earth asteroid due to whiz by Sunday morning. And that’s alright; a little rational fear helps spur us into action so that we can seek a logical solution. So should you be scared out of your mind about …

On Sunday, June 8th, an asteroid nicknamed “The Beast” will approach uncomfortably close to the Earth – 3.25 times the distance between the Earth and the moon, to be exact. The passing is uncomfortable for a couple of reasons: 1) Any space object nicknamed “The Beast” should be fear inducing no matter how close it is; and 2) The massive …

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) is one of the most iconic and impressive images ever taken of deep space. The image, taken of a tiny section of the southern sky, shows thousands of galaxies, putting the vastness of space into perspective for humans. Now astronomers have improved upon this classic image, adding a wider range of colors to the …

“What is color?” In December 2013 as part of his annual Flame Challenge, Alan Alda, the actor-turned-science-advocate, asked scientists to come up with an answer to that question in a way that an 11-year-old could understand. According to LiveScience.com, on Sunday, June 1, Alda announced the winners of the challenge at the World Science Festival, at an event which took …

A team of researchers from Ontario, Canada, have discovered that injecting a single dose of the neuropeptide oxytocin, which is normally produced in the hypothalamus region of the brain, can have a demonstrable effect on patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, according to a research study. Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a “devastating, progressive, neurodegenerative disease for which there is presently …

“Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair.” The Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s words are as apt as they are succinct. 20% to 40% of men and women diagnosed with schizophrenia are so tortured by their condition, that they attempt suicide. 5% to 13% complete the act. But as the scientific battle against this devastating disorder presses on, researchers are learning …

Bad air quality can be bad news. Conventional thinking of the past would say that an air purifier is for a person who has allergies, or smokes, or has a house with mold. But researchers are now saying that local bad air quality is enough to warrant the purchase of an air purifier, especially for pregnant women. WRCBtv in Chattanooga …

Did you witness the witching hour light show in the sky this morning? Me neither. It’s always nice to see these kinds of events live; but if you’re like me, you might have missed the Camelopardalid meteor shower on account of cloudy skies. Lucky for the both of us, media capturing the cosmic firework display was posted all over the …

Tropical Storm Amanda is now officially Hurricane Amanda, the first hurricane of the 2014 pacific season. The National Hurricane Center released this bulletin giving the latest updates of Amanda: AT 800 AM PDT…1500 UTC…THE EYE OF HURRICANE AMANDA WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 11.4 NORTH…LONGITUDE 109.9 WEST. AMANDA IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 5 MPH…7 KM/H. A TURN TOWARD THE …

Mummified mammoths are a big deal in the science community as they give us a better look at life thousands of years ago. We got our best look yet in 2007 when scientists discovered an almost perfectly preserved baby mammoth and now British citizens will finally get to see it in person. BBC News reports that the Natural History Museum …

As I live and breathe! Wait – where did that saying come from? We can’t very well do the former sans the latter. That’s why it’s awesome news for asthmatics that a medicine capable of suppressing allergen-induced asthma attacks might be imminent. Of the 25 million plus Americans with this condition, 60% have attacks caused by allergens. Research headed by …

Time to update the history book’s Jurassic Chapter! On the heels of hell-chicken, come two dinosaur updates – this time from Argentina. New evidence is showing that the largest known pre-Cretaceous creature may have some competition – and that some dinosaurs actually lived into the Cretaceous period. When remains of a long-necked, whip-tailed diplodocid were encountered recently in Patagonia, the …